The season is over, the Toronto Maple Leafs locked up 30th place, and all is right in the world, at least until draft lottery day when all our dreams come crashing down because of a certain other franchise, probably.
At the same time! There are still season post-mortems to be done as we look at the team we spent the past six months cheering for (against?), and with that comes a pretty unmistakeable stat: the Leafs were more injured than every other team in the NHL.
NHL top 10 man-games lost
— Man-Games Lost NHL (@ManGamesLostNHL) April 9, 2016
1 TOR 448
NJD 405
MTL 383
EDM 367
BUF 346
ARI 331
VAN 327
COL 317
PIT 313
OTT 307https://t.co/Pxnt5hlbuM
Granted, I do believe Stephane Robidas is counted in those 448 games; at the same time, though, would a veteran presence such as his have helped the Leafs in-game? There's no way to tell for sure, but by the end of the season the defence was nothing more than a collection of children, so possibly.
And losing a guy like James van Riemsdyk definitely didn't help. There were legitimate injuries the Leafs suffered, even though injuries aren't the reason why they finished at the bottom of the standings.
Still, here's (hopefully) to a healthier 2016-17!